Transitional justice for whom? Contention over human rights and justice in Tunisia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6220141 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Saerom Han (0000-0002-1703-0308, University of Aberdeen, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 816-832 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social movement studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1474-2829 • E-ISSN: 1474-2837 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14742837.2021.1967129 |
| OpenAlex | W3195942639 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 31 |
Despite the promise to address socioeconomic injustices and unemployment, these issues remain in political and public debates in ‘democratizing’ Tunisia without having no radical and systematic approach to resolving them in place. The existing literature notes that Tunisia’s ‘transition to democracy’ has been largely shaped by the old neoliberal approach, leading many youths to take to the street again. This article contributes to the literature and more broadly to the study of resistance in neoliberal times by exploring the relationship between the post-2011 transitional justice regime’s governing through rights and justice and the Mafrouzeen Amniya Movement, which consists of a group of unemployed protesters who claim that their right to work was violated by the state as a result of their protests against the authoritarian regime. Drawing on critical approaches to neoliberalism, human rights and social movements, I argue that transitional justice in Tunisia partly served neoliberal governing by marginalizing revolutionary demands for structural changes and social justice and promoting individualized forms of human rights. Crucially, the neoliberal function of transitional justice was not a top-down process but was constituted through a form of social movement whose dominant liberal human rights discourse was (re)produced by the state as well as by grass-roots movements including the Mafrouzeen Amniya group. In arguing this, rather than present unemployed protesters as being co-opted and subordinated to the state, this article offers a nuanced understanding of how they can reproduce and at the same time challenge the neoliberal transitional justice movement
Authoritarianism · Democracy · Economic Justice · Human rights · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · State (computer science · Transitional justice · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Political Conflict and Governance
The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
Resisting and Redefining State Violence
Effects of Invisibility
Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa
Securitization of the unemployed and counter-conductive resistance in Tunisia
The South African TRC as Neoliberal Reconciliation
Omnus et Singulatim’
Workers and thieves. Labor movements and popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt
Human Rights, Liberal Ontogenesis and Freedom
Parameters of economic reform in North Africa
The struggles of precarious youth in Tunisia
History and Anthropology
Activists beyond borders
Counter-conducts
Capitalism as a social movement
Rethinking neoliberalism, rethinking social movements
Human Rights, Self-Formation and Resistance in Struggles against Disposability
Reforming Social Justice in Neoliberal Times
Security, Territory, Population
Political power beyond the State
Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation
Unemployed mobilisation in times of democratisation
Political economy and social movement studies
Dangerous Discourses
The birth of bio-politics
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |